"Bad Bill" Waters: The Scourge of Menifee County

 
I plan to do an in depth blog about "Bad Bill" Waters in the future. His story goes a little deeper than this article portrays.  But for now, here is this article that was written by Mary Lou Brown and published in the Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, June 8, 1986.


"Bad Bill Waters

The Scourge of Menifee County 

His hot temper and violent, impulsive nature were nourished by a taste for the juice of mountain stills. But he always sounded calm and deliberate when he said, "I believe I'll just kill you."

By Mary Lou Brown

 

It was customary, he could have anything he wanted to eat, the warden told him, but the condemned man ate an unusually light last meal of fried oysters, sweet, milk, biscuits and coffee. Oysters a coveted food highly touted as an aphrodisiac, a rich man's food not readily available to a mountain man in the lean, hungry 1930s. Was the choice symbolic? He ate his oysters and spent his few remaining hours writing letters to friends and family.

At exactly 12:03 a.m. on Nov. 3, 1933, "Bad Bill" Waters, scourge of the Menifee County hills, stepped into the death chamber of the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville. Waters nodded to newsmen and to others gathered to witness his execution. No, he would have nothing more to say, except to deny that he had killed as many men as reputed.

He had said all he wanted to say in his appeal, which was denied. He acknowledged Floyd Willis, a Montgomery County farmer. "Well, Floyd, is this the first execution you've ever seen?" Willis nodded. Reporters later described Waters' tone as "bantering." The current was applied at 1 2:06 and "Bad Bill" Waters was pronounced dead at 12:09, ending a career of crime unparalleled in the history of Menifee, a Cumberland foothills county infamous in its early days for moonshine stills and a general climate of lawlessness. 

The road that Bill Waters traveled was a meandering trail of violence and murder leading from a small house on Hawkins' Branch, near Means, to the "big house" at Eddyville. Legend has it that Bill, "the meanest man in these parts," killed 13 men, but when pressed for specifics, old-timers will talk vaguely of "a man he killed over in Powell County" or of "two or three men he killed up in Ohio," supplying little or no evidence to support the legend. Jim Walters, 82, Bill's last remaining brother, states flatly that his brother did not kill 1 3 men. Jim long ago left Menifee for Grant County and is reluctant to talk about events of more than half a century ago, but he does so, he says, to "set the record straight" Jim is tall, as was his brother, straight as a yellow poplar, with a thatch of white hair and keen, blue eyes as perceptive as a hawk's. (Jim explains that the family name is actually "Walters," but through constant misspelling the "1" was finally dropped, reducing the name to He freely admits that his brother had a quick, murderous temper.

"Quick to get mad and quick to get over it He liked guns; always had a gun handy. That's what happened to the pack peddler," he said It has been rumored for 60 years that the itinerant peddler was Bill Waters' first murder victim. Bill, then 14, confessed the murder to Jim, but not to his parents, Polly and Ellis Waters. "A pack peddler came up Hawkins' Branch one day," said Jim. "You know how they used to walk the hollows with a pack on their backs, selling pots and pans, washboards, thimbles and thread? Our mother was at home alone.

The pack peddler got aggravated be-, cause she wouldn't buy anything. Talked right mean to her, she said, called her stingy. She wasn't She just didn't have any money." Bill came in from the field, and Polly told him about the rough manner of the peddler. Bill asked which way the peddler had gone, then slipped into a back bedroom and retrieved his shotgun. "He told me that he shot him, throwed him and his pack behind a log," Jim continued.

"A neighbor found the body, but the peddler was a stranger. Nobody asked any questions, and nobody ever came looking for him. That was the end of it for all I know." Jim describes his older brother as restless, searching always for adventure, excitement and money, which was rare on Hawkins' Branch. "He never was content to stay home and help Mother and Daddy, but he was a good worker. When just a boy, he bought two big goats and made him a can, harnessed his goats to it and went over to Powell County, where we used to live.

He hauled water for people in Clay City and made more money than my Daddy!" Bill then started going to Clay City at night, drinking and gambling. "It was more like home to Bill in Powell. That's where he got what little schooling he got" At an early age Bill tested for himself the potency of an illegal, home-distilled product made and sold locally in a Mason fruit jar. His fondness for drinking, fighting and gambling in Clay City did not go unnoticed. "First thing you know the law got an indictment for Billy, and he had to lay low for a while," said Jim.

"He was courting preacher Silas Amburgey's daughter, Bertha, and they got married. Then he joined the Army mostly to stay clear of the law in Powell County." World War I was in progress; the "long toms" were booming in France when the raw recruit arrived at Fort Knox for basic training. The restrictions of Army life palled on the impulsive mountain man, more accustomed to squirrel hunting in the early dawn than standing reveille. He simply walked away one morning, home to Menifee County. When the Army sought to reclaim him he turned himself in voluntarily, but in a few weeks he was home again.

Military police came for the recalcitrant soldier that time, but his third attempt at becoming a civilian succeeded. "Never knew if the Army turned him loose that last time or if he had deserted. He didn't say. Anyhow, nobody ever came after him," said Jim. Bill and Bertha settled down to serious housekeeping.

Four daughters Delma, Thelma, Hildreth and Gladys were born in quick succession. He found a job and seemed, on the surface, fairly content Other than his two vices, drinking and gambling, only one passion kept Bill away from home. When a baseball game was scheduled anywhere in the countryside, Bill was there. He was a pitcher, and a good one. When tempers flared on his favorite playing field at Chambers Station, Bill was known to walk away from the argument, holding his explosive temper in check.

But at home, he had no such control. With Bill away from home so much Bertha was lonely and "took to drinking," according to Jim. 

"Billy thought a lot of Bertha but couldn't get along with her after she started drinking. I kept him from killing her twee. She'd get drunk and just wander around, and it made him so mad he couldn't stand it.  Billy and I came in late one night, and Bertha was sitting on the side of the bed, drunk, with the little girls standing around. Billy was drunk, too. He said, 'Bertha, I believe I'll just kill you.'  He up and fired three shots at her with a .38 before I could stop him." Jim doesn't know to this day how he missed her.

"She never did raise her head up while he was shooting at her. I wrung the gun out of his hand, pushed him down on the bed and took his shoes off. He went to sleep." The next day Jim pointed out to his brother the bullet holes in the walls and in the ceiling. Bill said he remembered nothing of the incident, but Jim had his doubts.

 "Another time she was on the floor, drunk.  He said the same thing, 'Bertha, I believe I'll kill and leveled down on her with a Winchester shotgun. Again I ran under his gun, and he fired into the ceiling." 

Bill then moved to Ohio, a mecca of opportunity for a man wanting to work. But a state line did not cure what ailed Bill Waters: within a year he had shot and wounded a law officer who came to arrest him and was sentenced to a term in the Chillicothe Federal Reformatory. A short time later he and fellow inmate Ebra Thompson tunneled out of prison after first hiding in a drain pipe before lock-up.  The two men hid out by day and walked at night, heading for a refuge in the Kentucky hills that was always open to Bill: the home of Lulu and Taylor White on Science Ridge, a few miles from the Menifee County line, in Montgomery County.

 Lulu White, Taylor's 96-year-old widow, lives in Dayton, Ohio, with her daughter, Gertrude. Her ancient body is bowed by age, her red-rimmed eyes still bright with passion as she recalls the Chillicothe escape and the many "lies" told on her good friend, Billy. "That pore little feller had walked all the way from that prison," said Lulu. "His feet was a' bleedin' where he'd walked through the briars, him and that other feller.  Swum the Ohio River, he said. He said, 'Lulu, I don't want to bring no trouble down on and I got right down on my knees and I said, 'Billy, honey, you're not leaving here. You're staying. And if the law comes we'll fight it out with them right here on my front Would've, too," she added grimly. 

For the first few days the two escapees rarely left the confines of ." the White farm. But Thompson, a stranger to the area, soon became bored and began making daily trips to a general store, sitting and chatting with local denizens who loafed and whittled there. Bill thought Thompson was talking too much and to too many people. One day Bill invited the loquacious and unsuspecting Thompson for a little stroll in the woods. After a while Bill ordered Thompson to turn and face him. He pulled his gun and said casually, "I believe I'll just kill you." He aimed at Thompson's head, but Thompson ducked, instinctively shielding his face, and took the bullet in his arm.and asked Bill to take him to a doctor.

Thompson was bleeding badly. They walked back toward Lulu's, and by the time they reached the house Bill's anger had cooled. He agreed to let the man be taken to Mount Sterling to a doctor, which proved to be his undoing. 

The doctor immediately recognized the markings on Thompson's clothing as prison identification numbers. The two men were arrested and returned to Chillicothe. 

Bill had by now acquired a nickname that followed him to the end of his short life. "Bad Bill" a volatile man, eminently capable of murder, as explosive as kerosene on live coals; a man who would bear watching by friend and foe alike. 

When Bill was released from Chillicothe, he had no home to return to. Bertha, unable to cope after Bill was locked up, had put the four girls in an orphanage and had disappeared to make a new life. Bill went to Lulu's, his haven in any storm. 

 Lulu and her family were delighted to have him. "Billy was the most fun," said Lulu, and daughter Gertrude agrees. "We sang, laughed and talked," Gertrude recalls. "He played the French harp and the fiddle, and he'd take us to square dances and parties. We had an old 14-year-old dog that died of old age, and we took him up on the hill to bury him.We gave him a funeral, put flowers on the grave and cried over him you know how kids are." 

And Bill, not averse to killing another human being, cried over the dog's grave. He told the children that when he died he wanted his grave dug there beside the dog. "He said that we thought more of that dog than most people did of him. And he was buried there for 13-14 years, until his brother Jim had him dug up and moved to Williams' graveyard on Hawkins' Branch. He never wanted to be buried up there where so many people had been against him," said Gertrude.

Lulu also hastened to portray Bill as a kind, caring man, unaware of the inconsistency in her story: "I had an old cat, and little gang of chickens. Billy fed those little biddies, sat and played with them by the hour. The old cat ran out from under the porch one day, grabbed a chicken and killed it Billy came into the house, got his shotgun, and killed my cat I was mad! I asked him, 'Billy, why'd you kill my cat? He told me he just couldn't stand by and see his little chickens killed. He was tender-hearted as he could be." 

Bill grew restless, and when he heard that a distant cousin, Charley Neal, needed someone to help at his moonshine still Bill went to East Fork, near Means, and 'moved in with Charley. Bill was then a tall, well-built man in his early 30s, with a head of black hair and an infectious grin. He is described by women who knew him as "the prettiest man you ever laid two eyes on" and a man rumored to "have a way" with women. 

In welcoming Waters into his home, Charley Neal unwittingly set the stage for a three-cornered romance that led eventually to four violent deaths. Charley Neal was 55. His second wife, Carina was 20 years his junior, a good-looking woman who wore "paint and powder," tweezed her eyebrows and danced the "Charleston." (Charley had earlier swapped one of his young daughters and a shotgun to Corny's first husband for Corny. Both men were apparently satisfied, each having obtained a younger woman in the trade.) 

Charley was spending long hours at the still while his helper spent more and more time with Corny. Bill was badly smitten, says Lulu, but Charley was becoming suspicious. Charley would have to go. Although it was never proven, many who knew the couple (including Lulu White) believe that Corny actively participated in the murder as first charged. "She done it," said Lulu. "Killed her own man and blamed it on Billy. All Billy done was bury him."

 Many versions of the murder of Charley Neal have been told, but suffice it to say that with or without the help of Corny Bill Waters murdered Charley Neal at his moonshine still one day while they were working. Bill claimed that they had an argument, that he shot Charley in self-defense.  But a more likely scenario has Bill mildly telegraphing his move (as he usually did) by saying, "Charley, I believe Fll just kill you." 

Waters gave his victim a hasty burial and took immediate possession of Charley's cabin and, presumably, his wife. Neal's stepson alleged that Waters sat on the slain man's porch later that night playing his fiddle as if he hadn't a care in the world. When the stepson commented on Charley's absence, Bill warned him to say nothing and threatened to take him "squirrel hunting" in the woods a message clear and unequivocal if he talked to neighbors about Charley's disappearance. 

But Charley Neal's young children did talk, first among themselves and finally to neighbors. Their daddy was missing.Bill Waters had taken over the household, and they were afraid their daddy had been killed. 

Jess Amburgey, now of Jeffersonville (near Mount Sterling), lived on East Fork at the time. He recalls what happened next: 

"Charley Neal's kids came by my house one morning on their way to the store. They told me they thought Bill Waters had killed their daddy because he had never come home from the stilL I told them to go on back home, but to say nothing to Bill Waters about what they'd told me, or he might kill them. I talked to Rollie Goodpasture, who lived next to me, and we both wondered what to do about it I had the only car on the East Fork at the time a '28 Chevy and we decided to go to Frenchburg and get a warrant for Waters.

"When we got to town we found that Judge Elmer McGlothin was a' preachin' down this side of Frenchburg, on 460. We waited until he got done preaching and got ahold of him when church let out.  He went to the courthouse with us and Rollie swore out a 'John Doe' warrant for Bill." 

The next afternoon Sheriff John Lewis Back, along along with deputies Stanley Helton, Allie Henry, Johnny Cox and Marion Stapleton, Jailer W.S. Hogge, Constable Roy Williams and Menifee Spencer, a neighbor, headed toward East Fork to bring Waters in. "I warned them," said Amburgey, still shaking his head in disbelief at the officers' imprudence. "I told them they'd better wait until just before daylight the next morning to take him. I wouldn't go with them because I knew that Bill had that big old long, single-barreled shotgun loaded with buckshot, and I knew he would use it. He was already mad at me because I wouldn't loan him my pistol the day before.He was expect ing them to come and get him, see, and he was going to be ready. But they wouldn't listen to me, went up on that branch in broad daylight" 

The men found what they had feared they would find: the body of Charley Neal, about 150 yards from the still. He had been shot in the head with a shotgun; his body had been thrown into a ravine and covered with several burlap bags and 4 inches of earth. The body lay face-down in the shallow grave. (Neighbors who later witnessed the excavation of the body reported "scald burns, where hot still "slop" had been poured over the body either before or after death.)

 The sheriff and his men cautiously approached Neal's house, fanning out into a knee-high potato patch and a heavy growth of weeds. Sheriff Back called into the house. He had a warrant for Waters' arrest; would he come out peaceably? 

He would not.  He punctuated his answer with a blast from his shotgun. The lawmen returned a salvo of their own, and then a lull followed.  Deputy Marion Stapleton decided to creep up close to the house to peer into a window. It was the last decision he ever made - a blast from Waters' shotgun almost severed Stapleton's head.

The officers, firing indiscriminately, sprinted for cover, some falling face down in the potato patch, others hiding in the high sedge grass around the house. The bloody saga later prompted a song, describing the fears of at least one member of the posse: Johnny Cox, he hid in the grass And held his breath until Bad Bill passed... 

And pass he did, out a back door and into the rugged hills beyond. Waters was no stranger to the forest of black oaks, sweet gum, poplar and yellow pine in Menifee County. He knew the hilly terrain as well as he knew his own hand. 

The stillness of death blended with the acrid blue haze of gun-smoke around Neal's now deserted cabin. Their quarry had escaped, and Sheriff Back now took stock of his casualties. Marion Stapleton had been killed. Stanley Helton, who  died later that week at the hospital in Mount Sterling after issuing a deathbed statement, lay gravely wounded. Constable Roy Williams was bleeding profusely. 

"They wasn't up there more than an hour when they came back," said Amburgey, "a lot worse off than when they went in. Bill Waters was a mighty dangerous man. I told 'em so, but they wouldn't listen." 

After fleeing Neal's house into the woods on that hot July afternoon, Waters made a circuitous journey through the briars and thickets to a thick clump of trees near Taylor White's. 

"When we heard about the killings, we knew he'd come to us," said Lulu. "But then so did the law. They watched our house day and night, but Billy was out in the woods, watching them." 

Woodrow White, son of Lulu and Taylor White, still lives near the old homeplace.He was 13 years old in 1932. He remembers the morning that Waters made contact with the family. "I went with Willard Shepherd to an apple tree up on the hill behind the house to knock down some apples. We heard someone hollering, and it was Bill He was in bad shape, his clothes nearly torn off. He could hardly keep his pants up because his belt had been cut in two in the gunfight, but he wasn't hurt He asked us to bring him something to eat, and we carried stuff to him in the woods several days." 

But Bill started acting strange, according to Woodrow.But Bill started acting strange, according to Woodrow. "He talked about giving up, said that he'd got to 'seeing' his mother out in the woods, and it scared him."

The Menifee Fiscal Court had approved a $500 reward for his capture, while rewards from individuals, including the slain men's relatives, brought the total to $1,200, quite an inducement to his capture in those days. Still, no one seemed eager to become a hero. 

It was former Menifee Sheriff Ben Wells, a man Bill Waters knew and trusted, who finally talked the fugitive in. Wells, certain that Waters was hiding somewhere near Taylor White's, arranged a meeting between himself, White, Waters' friend Sam Shepherd and the wanted man.  The details of the surrender were worked out:  White and Shepherd would claim the reward for taking Waters in; the reward money would be used for Waters' defense. On July 19, 1932, Waters, accompanied by Wells, White and Shepherd, surrendered to authorities in Mount Sterling. (Waters would say later that surrendering was the worst mistake he'd ever made.) W.B. White, a Mount Sterling attorney, agreed to handle his defense. The case would be tried in Montgomery County because of intense feelings in Menifee.

Three murder indictments had been returned, but the commonwealth chose to try Waters for the murder of Stanley Helton, and he was moved to the Fayette County jail for safekeeping until his trial. A festive atmosphere prevailed in Mount Sterling when the trial began on Nov. 22, 1932. Families came in wagons, on foot, on horses and mules. Vendors hawked their wares on street corners, and eager spectators tried to squeeze into the packed courtroom.

Waters appeared unruffled, relaxed as he greeted friends before the trial. Witnesses for the prosecution testified that Waters had told them he would kill any officers who tried to take him into custody. Back and his deputies related the activities of the posse when Helton was killed. Admitted into evidence was Helton's dying statement "I am Stanley Helton. I am in serious condition and don't believe I can get well.

I was shot by Bill Waters today, July 13, 1 932." The only witness for the defense was Waters himself. He admitted firing at the officers. He didn't know the armed men in Charley's yard were law officers. He didn't believe that the slugs from his shotgun killed Helton; Helton was caught in the crossfire and killed by his own men. (A statement still accepted as gospel by those who knew Waters, including his brother, Jim.  Even Boone Helton, Stanley's father, entertained doubts about the shooting when Waters looked him in the eye during the trial and said, "Mr. Helton, I did not kill your boy.)" 

The jury deliberated one hour, 25 minutes. The verdict, guilty. The penalty, death in the electric chair. Waters made no comment on the verdict, but on his return to jail he observed: "This looks like they mean to get rid of me." 

Waters was to be taken to Eddyville, where on March 9, 1 933, according to the order of Montgomery Circuit Court, "the warden or his deputies shall proceed before sunrise to inflict on William Waters, the condemned, a current of electricity of sufficient intensity to cause death as quickly as possible..."

 On death row Waters kept busy. He drew pictures, wrote numerous letters and made a fiddle for Millard, a brother. In April 1 933 an appeal was denied, and a review of the merits of the case was denied in September. Inexorably, in spite of petitions on his behalf being circulated in Menifee, Powell and Montgomery counties, the date of his demise drew near. 

"It was the worst time of my life," said Lulu.She was bitter that Sam Shepherd had spent his part of the reward money without contributing a dime to Bill's defense. She and Taylor were working diligently to get names on petitions to take to Gov. Ruby Laffoon.

 "I got a letter from Billy every week," said Lulu. "He'd draw the prettiest pictures of little birds on his letters, and he drew a picture of his coffin.After he was dead I gave it all to his sisters because they wanted it Oh, I tried so hard to save him!" 

Lulu went door to door with the petition, getting more than 1,000 signatures. "I had a long paper just filled with names. I took it to Governor Laffoon's office. They wouldn't let me talk to him --shut the door in my face. I made three trips down there to talk for Bill, and they never would let me in to see the governor."

 Lulu paused, dabbing at her eyes with her apron.  "Ah, chillern, it was an awful time. Poor old Polly, Bill's mother she was taking it so hard. She prayed every night and day for them to save her boy." 

In late October Waters wrote to Taylor White and Bill Chapman, his "true" friends of long standing, commenting upon the treachery of Sam Shepherd. He urged them to write the governor in his behalf, but he professed little hope for a last-minute reprieve. To Lulu, he wrote that he had a lot of personal belongings in his cell that he wanted her to have.

"But I didn't get a thing. Some girl Bill had started writing to got it all, after all I'd done for him." 

Nov. 3 was a day firmly fixed in the minds of Bill's aging parents, who had moved to Bourbon County. They waited every day for a message saying that a stay had been granted. Instead, Ellis Waters was summoned to the nearest telephone.  When he came back, his gray head was bowed. Polly screamed and then fainted. Millard, who was shaving when his father brought the news, dropped his razor. Gov. Ruby Laffoon had spoken: No clemency, no last-minute reprieve.

"Polly cried until her voice broke, and she sounded just like a little kitten mewing," said Jim's wife, Dee. "She was down on her knees at midnight, asking God to have mercy on her son. He was her son; she loved him in spite of what he'd done." 

Lulu's family also waited, watching in fear as the hands of the clock crept slowly toward the dreaded hour. When the clock struck 12, the girls cried, and Lulu screamed. "They've killed him. They've killed the best boy that ever lived." 

Bill's body arrived that day at the Mitchell Funeral Home in Mount Sterling. Later, it was taken to Lulu's home. As customary, a large crowd gathered at the White home that rainy, cold night to "sit up" with the body. The house, the barn, even the yard were so full of people that Gertrude and her husband had to sleep in the back seat of an old car parked in the barn.

 An even larger crowd assembled on  Sunday for the funeral.  Bill's grave had been dug on the spot he had requested at the brow of the hill close to where the White's aged dog reposed. "Billy preached his own funeral," said Lulu, triumphantly. "He shore did. He wrote me a letter that I was to give to Asa Little, the preacher. And when it came time for the funeral he read what Billy wrote, right there on my front porch.Prettiest sermon you ever heard."

 Lulu, who grieved mightily, had a strange dream that night, after the grave had been closed and the last mourners had gone. "I dreamed that Billy was sitting in a chair where he always sat I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder. I said, 'Billy, are you satisfied with where you're at? and he said, 'Lulu, I'm the best satisfied man ever was. I'm all right' When he said that, a little bird flew out of his mouth and sung the prettiest song you ever heard." 

Lulu bowed her head, weeping. "I'll never forget him, and I believe Billy was a saved man. He'd done got right with the Lord. They killed him for nothing," she said, her red-rimmed eyes sorrowful. "They done away with him, killed him for nothing, and now he's a layin' in a lonesome old grave...

 Does it ever occur to Lulu that at least four victims also lie in "lonesome old grave?" A pack peddler, unknown and unmourned. Charley Neal. Marion Stapleton. Stanley Helton.And "Bad Bill" Waters, a Menifee County legend in his own time, put them there..

 MARY LOU BROWN is a free-lance writer who lives in Ntcholasville, Ky. "